Sears Tower Plot Was Not All That It Seemed

The plan uncovered by the FBI last
week proved little more than wishful thinking. But could it be a sign of
worse to come?

by Rupert Cornwell

The alarming news flashed across America's TV screens on Thursday evening:
government agents had thwarted an al-Qa'ida plot, using home-grown American
terrorists, to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago in a ghastly repeat of
9/11.

When the dust had settled barely 24 hours later, a rather more modest
version of events had emerged. The seven young black men arrested at a
warehouse in Miami and Atlanta had never been in touch with al-Qa'ida, and
had no explosives. Their "plan" to destroy America's tallest building was
little more than wishful thinking, expressed by one of them to an FBI
informant purporting to be a member of Osama bin Laden's terrorist
organisation.

Even the FBI admitted as much. John Pistole, the bureau's deputy director,
described the plan on Friday as "aspirational rather than operational" and
admitted that none of the seven (five US citizens and two Haitian
immigrants) had ever featured on a terrorist watch list.

In essence, the entire case rests upon conversations between Narseal
Baptiste, the apparent ringleader of the group, with the informant, who was
posing as a member of al-Qa'ida but in fact belonged to the South Florida
Terrorist Task Force. . . .

Even their religious leanings are in dispute. Neighbours say they were part
of a group, called Seas of David, that mixes Christian and Islamic elements.
. . .